It’s easy to forget, but Toronto has had its triumphs. Despite what many believe, this has not always been the city where good ideas go to die. Every so often, we manage to pull off something remarkable.

Among the most remarkable is St. Lawrence Neighbourhood, the 1970s housing development that to this day remains a shining example of Toronto getting things right. Though it broke all the urban planning orthodoxies of the time — no, because it broke them — St. Lawrence achieved the Holy Grail of urban planning: It became a successful, fully-functioning, mixed-use, mixed-income community.

Compared to other roughly contemporaneous planned neighbourhoods such as Regent Park, St. James Town or Lawrence Heights, St. Lawrence has grown stronger with time and is more desirable than ever. By contrast, the other housing projects are failed schemes in desperate need of a fix.

The results are there for all to see; bounded by Front, Yonge, Parliament and the railway tracks, St. Lawrence is a high-density mid-rise precinct that was organized along the existing street grid. A long, linear park extends along The Esplanade east from Jarvis all the way to Parliament. It isn’t pretty, but it’s always in use.

Some residents own their homes, others rent. Some units are full-market, others are subsidized. But it’s impossible to tell them apart, which means the neighbourhood is as inclusive as it can be.

But what enabled the city’s great moment? How did the stars align to make Toronto suddenly so bold and enlightened? Looking back from the perspective of 2014 and a city under Rob Ford, the accomplishment seems all the more extraordinary. We live at a time of deep cynicism; it’s hard to imagine a project as large and innovative as St. Lawrence could be realized.

The facts tell an amazing story: The city approved land acquisition in May, 1974, and just five years later the first residents moved in. The 44-acre site, then an industrial wasteland, was remade with more than 3,500 residential units. It had schools, a library, community centre, shops, restaurants as well as a bus running down the main drag.

“It was done in the city, by the city and for the city,” says David Crombie, the mayor who led Toronto between 1972 and ’78, when St. Lawrence took shape. “We had a sense of the scope of the project, but we fought each battle trench by trench.”

As Crombie points out, there was a happy concentration of “extremely talented” people on City Council, the civic bureaucracy and other leadership positions. He mentions Michael Dennis, who became city housing commissioner, councillors Susan Fish, Karl Jaffray and Colin Vaughan, designers Stephen McLaughlin, Frank Lewinberg, Ken Greenberg and Alan Litttlewood, who served as de facto chief planner of St. Lawrence. Their scheme broke every planning rule in the book, but that’s exactly what made it so successful.

“In the late ’60s and early ’70s, there was strong concern in the city about housing and neighbourhoods,” Crombie recalls. “The model at the time was to tear everything down for what was called ‘urban renewal.’ Much of the city was being sacrificed on the altar of growth, and it was being done in such a hurry people were worried about what would happen in their neighbourhood.”

In addition to pressing social circumstances and a surfeit of talent, Crombie also notes that both federal and provincial governments were willing to use their clout and contribute funding to St. Lawrence. Given the relative absence of “senior” levels of government today — especially Ottawa — their involvement seems all the more striking.

“But most important,” Crombie argues, “is the need to create a constituency that allows you to take the leaps you have to make.”

For his part, architect/planner Allan Littlewood gives much of the credit to Crombie. “It was leadership,” he insists. “David’s mostly, but also John Sewell, the Reform Council, (then finance minister) Donald MacDonald, Michael Dennis. Normally you get bureaucratic mess and civil servants protecting their turf. But suddenly people were moving mountains to get things done. What we’re missing today is the spirit of co-operation not confrontation. We just barged ahead. We were excited about the city and driven by enthusiasm.”

“The city has lost its nerve,” says Littlewood. “I think the population has lost its nerve, too. Toronto has also lost its sense of civicness. We’re more focused on the rights of the individual than the city. Planning was critical, but St. Lawrence wasn’t just a planning idea. It was also about the energy, enthusiasm and co-operation that went into it. We have forgotten that co-operation is more creative than competition.”

“If the stars were aligned,” Crombie says, “they had to be pushed into alignment.”

It helped that the great urbanist herself, Jane Jacobs, was involved. She had moved to Toronto in 1968 and quickly became a kind of civic patron; her contribution to St. Lawrence was what gave Crombie, Littlewood and their team the courage to go against the planning verities of the day. Since then, Jacob’s influence has spread around the word.

Beginning with Crombie, a succession of Toronto mayors had direct access to Jacobs. It was she as much anyone who ensured that St. Lawrence didn’t end up a Canadian Pruitt-Igoe, the appalling mid-’50s housing project in St. Louis, Missouri, blasted to bits in the early ’70s.

After almost 40 years, there’s no possibility of such a fate befalling St. Lawrence. It is an established city neighbourhood, newer than most, but as much a part of the city as any and there for all to see.

If only we could remember how we did it.

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